ABSTRACT
Marxism has been a close partner of self-determination throughout this century, and particularly since the end of World War II. In the case of Marxism and self-determination, it should prove enlightening to go back well beyond the contemporary post-colonial era, to the time after the First World War, when the boundaries between imperialism and colonialism lay in Central Europe, and not in Africa. The Burgenland case is especially suitable for such a study because it occurred at the high tide of Wilsonian self-determination, at a time, in fact, when self-determination was the officially proclaimed ideology of the world's rulers. The Austro-Marxists did not want to surrender their democratic principles. This meant that the Austrian Communist Party was unable to take over the Social Democratic Party and hence remained insignificant. Hungarian Soviet priorities set on feeding the urban proletariat, and with little knowledge of the peasantry or contact with them, the Hungarian government succeeded only in solidifying rural opposition.
